Dating website caught in the act

David Swan
Friday, 23 July 2010 13:22

Your IT - Home IT

Popular online dating website Red Hot Pie has been forced by the courts to reveal to its users that it operated 1,371 of its own profiles on the website.

 

The federal court found that Jetplace,  the owner of the website, was telling ‘Red Hot Lies’; creating fake profiles in order to send disingenuous messages and flirts to real users.

The court ruling found that Jetplace was in breach of the Trade Practices Act 1974 through “engaging in misleading conduct” and by “representing that membership of the website had benefits that it did not have.”

The court also declared that Jetplace directors Maxwell James McGuire and Mark Semaan were aware of the offending conduct.

As punishment, Jetplace must publish a notice of correction to each user of the website who registered between December 2004 and November 26, 2008 when they log on, and to send a copy of the notice to the email address of each of these users.

Users may also apply for refunds if they’re able to prove that they were misled by the conduct into paying for membership of the website.

One of the directors, Mr McGuire, said the 1,371 profiles were created over a four-year period and only "a small number" of those profiles were active at any given time.